One Child
by Natalie Martinez
Summary: Emma Frost does not take kindly to an abused child taken back to their abusive parents.


Disclaimer: Emma Frost, and the rest belong to Marvel comics. The child belongs to me. 

**

One Child

**

Natalie Martinez

_As we die, both you and I_

_With my head in my hands_

_I sit and cry_

-No Doubt "Don't speak"

Sean Cassidy was worried. On Thursday Emma Frost had come back from her volunteer job, grabbed a bottle of red wine, and locked herself in her room. Today was Sunday and she had yet to open the door. Even the usual laughter of the adolescents of generation X had not brought her out of her room, not even when it had been discovered that Angelo had cut away a small hole so that the girls could be viewed in their different bedrooms. His head still ached from the screaming and yelling that had occurred afterwards. It had taken everything in his power to keep Monet, Jubilee, and Paige from shredding him into so much dryer lint. Over all he could really have used her help with the girls this weekend, yet still she was strangely silent and unresponsive. No amount of knocking on her door had helped and he was finally fed up. She would open the door or he would blow the damm thing off its hinges. 

"Emma," he called to her. "Emma, let me in." There was no answer to his call. He began to furiously knock on the door. "Open the door you daft woman! Open the door now or I'll scream it off!" He hated resorting to such juvenile methods, but who knew what was going on in there? After another five minutes with no response he opened his mouth and let out a sonic screen that turned the solid oak door into so much pulp. What greeted his eyes made him gasp in shock for a moment as he looked at her still body. "Call the X-men!" he shouted knowing that one of the generation X would be nearby. "Tell them to send a telepath!" 

He took the few steps to her bed and looked down at Emma Frost. He had never seen her with a hair out of place, and without looking positively stunning. At the moment she looked like an old statue that a tormented artist had made. Beauty descending into madness, he thought they might call her. He pulled her into his arms and took her to the med-lab. "Ah gi'l...what have they done to ye?"

***

Jean Grey stood over the bed of a person she had once upon a time considered one of her worst enemies with a look of concern etched on her face. What could possible have sucked the White Queen under like that? Her face was a twisted mirror of reality. She looked as though her face had frozen into a mask of a person seeing their own death coming. What could possible have caused this? 

The worst part was she couldn't find a way into her mind. Her barriers were up high. The most confusing thing is that she was sending out a broadcast on a narrow channel of the mind. She was forcing herself to keep in contact with someone, even though she obviously found the contact distasteful to say the least. Why hasn't she severed the contact then? 

Something had to be done, and done fast. Her life signs were quickly deteriorating. How long had she been like this? Ever since Thursday like Sean believed? That had to be impossible. No psi on the planet had ever been known to do that. She must have started on Saturday night. Either way, it stopped now. Jean was going to have to force her to break the connection so they could save her life.

She reaches deep within Emma's mind, all the while preparing her psychic armor. Once inside though, she was shocked to find nothing active. Most minds have old memories running around like children in toy stores or new memories being made. There was no action, no movement except for far off where she saw Emma hunched over talking to someone in a whisper.

Jean, to be quite frank, didn't care who she was talking too. She threw a psychic line around Emma and with a brutal pull thrust her into the real world.

***

Emma Frost came out of her trance with a scream of pure rage. Her hands instantly went for the lamp beside her bedside and brought it crashing down on Jean Grey's head. With a satisfactory thump she watched as the red head hit the ground. The connection had been broken between her and one of the kids at the clinic. No matter though, she knew where the girl lived and would reestablish contact.

"Have ye gone mad?!" Sean's voice says behind her. She whirls to face him and hits him with a telepathic punch so hard that even the Dark Phoenix would have been impressed. Before she can do anything else Gateway appears before her. He didn't do anything, just sat there floating on the air with sad eyes.

"Take me to her," she says as she walks up to him. "Please. She's almost gone. I have to stop them from killing her." Without another word he swings his bolo around and around. A golden light forms and she rushes through to the other side praying she isn't too late.

***

The minute she walks through to the other side she sees she's where she needs to be. She grabs a nearby neighbor's mind and forces them to call the police. They would need to clean up the bodies.

The girl's huddled in a corner, barely conscious. Blood formed a pool around her, mostly around her head. Another sort of pool had formed on her dress. Domestic violence and rape are never pretty. She was barely holding on to life. In a way Emma was sure she should be thankfully to Jean for bringing her out of her mind so she could attend to business.

"What're you doing here," the father bellows. "I told you snot nosed counselors to stay out of my face!" She grabs his mind and smiles as she forces him to forget how to breathe. She delights in the feel of his mind pushing, straining to start the air pushing into his lungs. He could never outmatch a telepath though. It is over before it begins. She lets his body fall to the ground, dead and lifeless. As dead and lifeless as his soul had been for years.

"What's going on? Why did you stop punishing…" Then she spots her, the blond avenging angel dressed all in white leather. The mother had always been frightened of her, and with good reason. "Aren't you that counselor?" she never gets her question answered because soon she is heading for the kitchen, for a knife to cut her throat with.

***

Emma looks over at the door. She knew that this was where they had brought the child. She had picked one of the men's mind who had loaded her into the ambulance when he took the girl away. Now all she has to do is get into the room. She has to know her condition; it can't wait for Monday. Was she going to make it? Of course, the child would make it. She just *has***** to be all right. She doesn't even stop to see if she can get by to see her, the hospital people have their orders. They never let anyone in, especially when on the critical list. That's fine with her, she has her own mission. 

She opens her mind and lets everyone around her in. It feels like being in front of the speakers at a heavy metal concert, but she doesn't care. She has to find her. She quickly "hears" the girl's voice and zooms in on it, Room 218. She takes a hold of the girl at the front desk's mind. "You see no one." She walks right past the girl as she sit staring blankly at the TV in the waiting room.

Room 218 isn't very far away and she opens the door slowly. The girl lies on the bed like a corpse. All pallor's gone from her skin. Giant plastic tubes stick into her arms and wrists like giant needles. One particular large one is in her nose. It looks like it's stealing the breath right out of her small form. Emma stays there a while just watching her chest rise and fall shallowly, a drowned kitten fighting for its last breathe. The girl would make it though; she was a fighter, like her.

"Miss Emma?" The voice so soft and whispery, like the sound of someone not longs for this world.

"I..I thought you were asleep. Please, save your strength, you'll need it in the next few days."

The smile the child gives her is as warm as a blanket left beside a fireplace. So warm, so giving, so understanding. "I could tell you were here. I knew you wouldn't leave me." The innocent blue eyes connect directly with her soul, tearing it apart. She feels the first tear fall. "It's all right Miss Emma," the child says as she smiles weakly up at her. "Soon I'll be better off."

She stares at her. The child must still think she's going to die. "No sweetie. You're going to be fine. You're not going to die. You're going to get better and I'll take you someplace safe."

That small lost dreamy grin again. "No Miss Emma, you're wrong. They're coming for me. Don't worry though, I'll be happier. It'll be better this way. You'll see. Where I'm going, no one will ever hurt me again."

"Don't talk such nonsense child." She strokes gently on her head, carefully avoiding the places with bruises and blood. "You're going to be fine. You'll get better, and we've made sure that your parents will never get anywhere near you again. I swear." She kept the fact that she had killed them to herself.

Those innocent blue eyes ripped through her again, "But you swore you'd never let them near me last time." Silence follows for a moment. The child was right. More than likely she would be given to the mother's sister, a person with an even worse record than the father. "I can't take that chance anymore Miss Emma. They made you last time. They'll do it again. I'm…I'm sorry." Her eyes close for the last time.

***

Emma felt the world crumple around her like a used tissue. She was gone. She was dead. Her murders were dead, but it didn't matter. Nothing would happen. At least not anything that would mark or change the system. No one really cared about the children anymore. Why should they? These kids were the cast offs of society. People saw them as not being real. They saw them as living in some nightmare world that didn't exist anywhere except on TV. That's all they thought it was, a fantasy. How many of them had to try to straighten out the damage that one of those children's oh so loving parents had done to one of them? How many more children would walk through the clinic doors, beaten, battered, burned, and abused? How many more before these kids grew up and struck back at the world like they had been treated? How many children would go home to visit with family members and never return? How many more bodybags? How many more times would her heart be given freely to these children just to see them grow and flourish while in therapy, but be returned to their tormentors again, and again, and again? How many more? How many times would she have to explain to a child that the government demanded that they visit their parents? How many times would these children purposely get in trouble with the law just to escape their "homes"? A home, what's that? To most it's a place to go to feel safe and protected. To these kids, it was where doors were locked; darkness breathed and lived, strange people were allowed to take whatever they wanted from their young bodies and souls? How could anyone try to ever "heal" that pain, that hurt, that wariness and not be destroyed by it?

Emma Frost dropped to her knees and cried for the first time in a long time. She cried for herself, for the dead, for the living, and all the children stuck in the terrible living nightmare in between that people were just oh so happy to forget existed.


End file.
